Introduction
A
man named Dunninger is entertaining millions
today with what appears to be tremendous powers of
extrasensory perception. A man named Bernstein has
written a! book about Bridey Murphy
I
that presumes
to prove that those that lived in the past can speak
through those living in the present. This book has had
ten printings in one year at $3.75 per copy-plus other
editions in English, Danish, Spanish, Swedish, French,
Italian, and Dutch. Radio programs and magazine articles on some phase of extrasensory perception are appearing almost daily-and the public cats them up.

And the Christian public eats them up, too-and
then goes to the preacher and asks: "Preacher, what
about Dunninger? What about Bridey Murphy?" And
the majority of Bible-believing preachers mumble something or other about fraud or error or demons or Satan
and re-bury their heads in the sand along with the proverbial ostrich.

I'm one of those preachers that is a target for such
questions-especially since I'm also a scientist-having
been a research chemist before I found Christ as Saviour and Lord and surrendered my life for the Christian ministry. But the trouble is, I can't find any "stock
answer"-because the more I investigate the more I
find that Parapsychology is a legitimate science-in
the sense that the word "science" is usually understood: "The examination and classification of facts".

At this point it would not be amiss to remind ourselves of that which would seem to be so elementary
as to be almost profane-that is, the difference between fact and theory. In practically every instancepossibly with no exceptions whatsoever-the world's
leading parapsychologists are not Christians in the historic sense of the word (do not believe the sixty-six
books of the Bible to be the verbally inspired Word of
God). Consequently, their interpretation of the facts
they discover almost inevitably contradicts the interpretation that God's Word would demand (and they
must interpret, incidentally, because they are really
"on the spot" to give some reasonable interpretation of
facts that would seem to contradict the generally accepted "laws" of nature). Many Christians, then, read
interpretations and presume that the whole field of
parapsychology is a sorcerer's den.

But the facts are still there
...
and the public knows modem research in parapsychology had its roots in
it
...
and we've got to face it. (And what many don't
know is that the facts seem to indicate that Dunninger
is a great showman-nothing more-as is Bernstein; though every part of the Bridey Murphy matter could
be explained by Psychology without resort to parapsychology. But these same facts tell a story more amazing than Dunninger or Bernstein have ever produced).
The discoveries of parapsychology need the full light
of God's Word shed upon them that the world might
see that the Holy Scriptures have the only adequate
interpretation of these phenomena.

It might disturb many Christians to have to admit
that certain natural laws make possible precognition, retrocognition, clairvoyance,
psychokinesis, etc., without
the supernatural intervention of personalities outside
this universe. But then again, in spite of II Peter 3:10
many Christians were surprised to learn from Einstein
that God would not have to work a miracle but simply
use already-operating laws of nature to transform the
matter of the universe into "fervent energy." And I really believe some Christians (though professing to
believe that God created the heavens and earth and
necessarily limited them) were surprised to learn that
the universe is limited-and not by some "super-natural" wall of heavenly stones, but by natural laws . . .
much as scientists who profess to understand Einstein's space-time continuum seem surprised to learn
of psi phenomena where neither space nor time is a
limiting factor.

Ancient Research

It would be hard to know where to begin tracing
the history of formal, scholarly research in parapsychology. Saint Augustine did much formal research in this
field with a clairvoyant, Albicerius, who was able to
locate lost articles-apparently by extrasensory perception. He also investigated an apparent case of telepathy
in a hysterical patient who was visited periodically by
his priest. Their homes were 12 miles apart, and yet
the patient seemed to know when the priest left home
to visit him, and when and how he would arrive
2.
And
Plutarch
3
propounded a thoroughgoing theory of mental telephathy in which he theorized that spiritual beings in the act of thinking set up vibrations in the air
which enable other spiritual beings, and also certain
abnormally sensitive men, to apprehend their thoughts. Modern Research

From a Christian standpoint, we might say that nineteenth century rationalism and materialism. Until
the nineteenth century, most of the world's peoples
took "spiritual" phenomena for granted. Christians,
of course, accepted-without feeling the need of human
experimentation-the picture given in God's Word of
the activities of God (the infinite, eternal, unchangeable spirit), angels (good spirits, messengers of God),
demons (evil spirits, fallen angels), as well as their
ability to communicate with and manifest themselves
to the indestructible spirit of man which, in the case
of a Christian, could be "absent from the body but
present with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8) ; or, in the case
of the unbeliever, absent from the body but conscions
"in torment" (Luke 16).*

Likewise, each other religion had a place for the
spirit beings it knew to be active in various relationships to men. And even the peoples who had no formal
religion nevertheless exercised various degrees of credulity toward the reported activities of "ghosts," "oracles," "ha'nts," etc.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century a large
segment of "educated" mankind began to feel that it
could examine anything in the universe under the
scientific microscope, and that the scientist's mind
could understand and explain anything that is within
the realm of reality. Since demons and ghosts and
haunts and spirits don't obey the "laws" which man's
brilliant mind had discovered, this was prima facie
evidence that there couldn't be any such thing. It was
during that era that "spiritual" phenomena were the
special reserve of a fringe commonly regarded as
lunatic.

But just because scientists said there weren't any
such things, sp iritual phenomena didn't cease to exist.

And though the scientist labeled many phenomena unexplainable by

his
"natural" laws as "superstition"
these phenomena continued to occur, and became all the
more noticeable because folks had been told that there
wasn't any such thing. And at the same time, men such
as Einstein were demonstrating that the idolized "laws"
of Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry were no
laws at all, but simply poor attempts to explain what
men saw, by forgetting its relation to the rest of the
universe.

So, toward the end of the nineteenth century many
with scientific backgrounds decided they had as much
fight to go hunting telepathic, clairvoyant, psychokinetic ghosts that didn't seem to obey the so-called "laws"
of space-time, matter-energy as did physicists to go
hunting the photon, electron, mesitron ghosts that
didn't seem to obey these same "laws." So they re
fused

* Note, however, that there has never been much
Christian thought on the subject of HUMAN spirit-to-spirit
communication without use of physical organs. Certainly humans in heaven and hell before the resurrection WILL communicate with one another (Cf. Luke 16). Will
their spirits
have
an ADDED capacity then which they do NOT have now?

to longer ignore "paranormal" phenomena, but
rather began turning the searchlights of scientific research upon the realm of the "psyche"-which would
include the Biblical realm of the spirit as well as that
area of the temporal between the realm of the spirit
and that of the brain.

Many of these scientists entered this field of research
just to prove once for all that there is not a realm of
reality beyond the physical. Others had been convinced
that there is a vast realm beyond psychology which
exists, but which had never been explored. Thus was
born the science of parapsychology.

The Science Of Parapsychology

Some would begin their discussion of the science of
parapsychology with
the work of Friedrich Anton Mesmer 1733-1815). It would not be wise to take space
here to discuss Mesmer's life and work since it is familiar to most and available to the rest in the nearest
encyclopoedia. The important thing about Mesmer is
that he discovered a means of healing which medical
science could not understand, so a committee of the
world's leading scientists, including Ben Franklin,
closed their eyes and said "there is no such thing."

Of course, Mesmer ignorantly gave his discovery a
name that represented a false theory--"animal magnetism." So a century later his discovery had to be relabeled "hypnotism" to rid it of all the reproach connected with Mesmer's name and theory. But to this
day medical science has not given an adequate explanation of the jlbct that one mind can exercise power
over the bodily processes of another body. Medicine
uses the effects of hypnotism constantlv, but I think
most doctors, whether they admit it or not, realize that
their theories as to how those effects are produced are
inadequate.

The First Research Societies

The first recorded society for scientific research in
the field of parapsychology was at Cambridge University in 1852. It was there that a group of young men,
many of them destined for brilliant careers, founded the
"Cambridge Ghost Society" for the critical investigation of reports of "ghosts" and "hatintings" of the kind
familiar to popular tradition
5.
Soon afterward there
was organized at Oxford University a similar group
named "The Phantasmological Society'16

In 1882 Dr. Henry Sidgwick, professor at Trinity
College, London, who had taken an active interest in
the work of the Cambridge group, gathered around him
a group of eminent scientists and, together, they organized the British Society for Psychical Research. He
and his wife, the President of Newnham College, gave
a great part of their time to research and preparation of
reports and papers. Along with Prof. Sidgwick, the
first President, were Vice Presidents Prof. W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.E., Royal College of Science, Dublin; and
Prof. Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., Owens College, Manchester. Members included a large number of wellknown Fellows of various learned and royal societies,
professional men, and members of Parliament. In the
following years membership in this society included reknown scientists and scholars from almost every science
and art known to man.

Among the subjects first taken up for examination
and so far as possible, for experimental study, were

1. Thought-transference, or an examination
into the nature and extent of any influence which
may be exerted by one mind upon another apart
from any generally recognized mode of perception
or communication.

2. The study of hypnotism and forms of so-
called mesmeric trance.

3. An investigation of well-authenticated re
ports regarding apparitions and disturbances in
houses reputed to be haunted.

4. An inquiry into various psychical phenom
ena commonly called "spiritualistic."
7.

By 1887 the society had uncovered 370 cases of hauntings, eighteen of which gave "irrefutable" proof
of some ultra-physical agency8. Naturally, these findings by such an eminent group of scholars aroused interest around the world.

Because of the challenge given by the work and
publications of the British investigators, other similar
societies arose in the years following in various lands.
An American Society for Psychical Research was
founded in 1885. It later became a branch of the British
Society until 1905, when it was re-established as an
independent organization. Recently a medical section
composed of MD's has been formed within the society.
The Society for Parapsychology was founded in 1948 in
Washington, D.C., announcing as its purpose "To advance the science of parapsychology and to promote
its study"
9.
There are various other societies for research in parapsychology in such countries as Norway,
France, Germany, The Netherlands, etc.

In 1921 the First International Conferene of Psychical Research was held at Copenhagen, Denmark, and
conferences have been held regularly since that time.
The First International Conference of Parapsychological Studies was held at the University of Utrecht, The
Netherlands, in 1953 followed by another in St. Paul
de Vence, France the following year. It is expected
such conferences will be held regularly in the years
ahead.

Endowed Research

Probably the first recognition of this type research
as a definite field of science came with the establishment
of the first
endowed
impartial research institute, the
Institute Metapsychique. Today there are similar foundations in most major civilized nations, including one
in America with headquarters in New York City.

In 1921 the first
University
laboratory for parapsychology research was established at the University of
Groningen, The Netherlands10. Actually, other universities had already accepted endowments for parapsychological studies previous to this date. Stanford University had accepted (in 1912) a very
considerable sum of money for the promotion of such studies. Smaller donations for such studies had been accepted by Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
But none of these schools had set up laboratories, and
none had reported any positive results-with the exception of Harvard. And Groningen's research was
not extensive, but did deal thoroughly with one subject who manifested striking telepathic ability
11.

In 1923 Harry Houdini conspired with Dr. Win. McDougall to bring psychical research to the notice of the
universities of America and to secure for it a place
among their recognized fields of study. They secured
the help of Prof. Carl Murchison, head of the Department of Psychology at Clark University. The result
of this conspiracy was a series of lectures by some of
the world's leading scholars * which were later printed
by the University press and labeled timidly,
The Case
For and Against Psychical Belief13.

Duke University

But actually "the modern era in parapsychological
experimentation started in 1927 when Dr. J. B. Rhine
joined Prof. Win. McDougall's Psychology Department
at Duke University"
14.
Dr. Rhine had started his career by attending a denominational school, purposing to
enter the ministry. His own testimony is that the first
course in psychology at the institution destroyed his
Christian faith: "By the time I had finished the course
I had quite a different vocation in mind and the realization that I had no religion left worth preaching to anyone"
15.
Dr. Rhine became convinced that man is a
purely
temporal
being and that there is no such thing
as "soul" or "spirit" (though today he admits the
probability that there is
something
that survives bodily
death). Consequently he turned from the field of religion to that of psychology, and did post-doctorate research at Harvard on the subject of
"spiritism"-just
about the time of the famous expos6s of Boston mediums. And though he found no basis f or accepting
spiritism as a
faith,
he did find information that shaped
his plans for his lifetime study.

The occasion of Dr. Rhine's move to Duke is called
the beginning of a "new era" because shortly after he
and his wife, Dr. Louisa Rhine came to Duke the uni-

versity set up a separate Department of Parapsychology
with Dr. Rhine at its head-thus recognizing this as a
separate realm of science.

"The publication of the first report (16) from
the Duke Laboratory in 1934 brought forth, along
with much controversial discussion, a fair amount
of repetition by other experimenters in America
and England. There was such confirmation of
these repetitions as to establish the occurrence of
ESP entirely independently"17

The ultimate result has been the establishment of
departments of parapsychology or lecturers in parapsychology at such widely-separated institutions as
University College in lbadan, Nigeria; The Universities of London, Melbourne, Munich, Utrecht, Rhodes
(South Africa), Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Cambridge,
Oxford, Harvard, and numerous other institutions of
higher learning. In addition to endowments established
at the various universities, research in the field of parapsychology is being carried on through grants by such
widely varied sources as the Rockefeller Foundation,
the Mellon Foundation, and The Office of Naval Research (United States). Symposiums in parapsychology are held regularly by such honored learned societies as the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal
Institution of Great Britain. Publications of learned
organizations include The Journal of Parapsychology
and the JournaZ of the American Society for Psychical Research in America, The Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research in England, The Revue
Metapsychique and La Tour St. Jacques in France,
plus many others. Popular and scientific books in this
field number in the hundreds-eight scholarly books
have come from the Duke University staff alonepublished in six different languages-plus hundreds of
articles in scholarly and popular journals. However,
as far as can be ascertained at this time, there is at
present no distinctly Christian group laboring in this
f ield.

Critical Appraisal

Critical discussion of the findings, and especially
the methods of university research in parapsychology
reached its peak in 1937-38.

First of all , statisticians and mathematicians offered
voluminous constructive and destructive comment concerning the conclusions reached. It would take days
to go over just a portion of the work done in this
field-work developing from criticism that the experimenters take only "gifted" subjects-trying to show
that "Position effect" curves are simply the "law of
averages" catching up--etc. However, because of this
widespread controversy a veritable science of statistical
mathematics grew up around this research; and such
methods of mathematical analysis of findings were developed as to lead Dr. Burton H. Camp, President of
the Institute of Mathematical Statistics to declare (in
1937) :

Dr. Rhine's investigations have two aspects: experimental and statistical. On the experimental side mathematicians of course have nothing to say. On the statistical
side, however, recent mathematical work has established
the fact that, assuming the experiments have been properly performed, the statistical analysis is essentially valid.
If the Rhine investigation is to be fairly attacked, it must
be on other than mathematical grounds (18).

Recently (1956) Dr, Robert McConnell, Professor
of Biophysics at the University of Pittsburg and Dr.
Alan S. Parkes, Physiologist at the National Institute
for Medical Research stated19 in a report to the Institute of Mathematical Statistics that either our entire
science of probability mathematics is defective or parapsychologists have made a major biological discovery.
And they went on to add that the first would be a
more unbelievable discovery than the second.

Critics took Dr. Camp's hint and proceeded to attack
parapsychology on grounds other than statistics-that
is, the experimental set-up. This led to the almost
incredible safeguards against fraud, error, etc. under
which the parapsychologist must labor before the results of his research becomes acceptable for publication.
By 1938, however, the American Psychological Association had given its approval to the experimental
methods of parapsychology, labeling them as "completely satisfactory"20. Since this time sceptics have
found it necessary to confine their criticism to individual investigators-with exception of such widely-scattered articles as that by George Price in the August 26,
1935 issue of Science in which he for all practical purposes accuses of fraud all those who have
reported
positive results in ESP research. He wrote:

Not only does ESP challenge current physical theory;
there is also no conceivable explanation as to how it
operates or could operate-for example, precognition.
This situation, the author believes, allows only the alternatives of fraud and error; and since some of the ESP
work can be accounted for by no conceivable combination
of error, the theory of f raud remains as the only possible explanation
21.

This attack-seemingly f rom emotion rather than
knowledge-drew defenses from scholars all over the
world: so many, in fact, that both Science22and the
Journal of Parapsychology23found it necessary to
print a supplement containing these articles. The whole
exchange emphasized the fact that the only alternative
to acceptance of the fact of psi is that all those scientists
reporting positive results in psi research are deliberate
frauds-which is actually one of the strongest testimonials one could give in support of the psi hypothesis.
Parapsychology is actually so firmly established as a
science that the world's leading psychiatrist, C. J.
Jung, and reknown physicist, W. Pauli, wrote their
monumental work, The Interpretation of Nature and
the Psyche24in an effort to integrate the discoveries of
parapsychology with the natural sciences by proposing
a new philosophy of "synchronicity" which does away
with the historic conception of "cause and effect."
(However, to the Christian's mind it sounds suspiciously like a human doctrine of providence which ignores the One Who governs "all His creatures and all
their actions").

Likewise Dr. Pascual Jordan, internationally famous
German nuclear physicist recently proposed a philosophy which seeks to integrate the discoveries of parapsychology with those of nuclear physics, molding
them into a new conception of the universe. He compares the mind with the electron. You can measure
the impulse or wavelength of an electron, but then you
can't define its location. On the other hand, you can
observe the place of the electron, but then the wavelength or impulse becomes totally undefined. He compares this with the conscious mind perceiving a table
through what we call "normal perception" and the
"psychic" mind perceiving a table through "extrasensory perception." Others may share either perception,
in either realm, but neither is explainable in terms of
the other. He emphasizes25 that he considers telepathy
and clairvoyance unexplainable by physical means and
yet so firmly established that it must be accepted as
fact. This statement is almost identical with one made
by English physicist Sir Arthur Eddington26.

Periods In the History of Researchof Parapsychology

1. Previous to 1852.
It was during this period that
the spontaneous activity of psychic occurrences were
simply taken for granted-though some bold souls from
time to time ventured to seek more knowledge about the
it
whys and wherefores" of such phenomena as "hauntings" "hypnotism," etc.

2. The initial years of the Society for Psychical Research,
when undifferentiated extrasensory perception
(telepathy and clairvoyance not distinguished from
one another) was the major object of research.

3. Overlapping this period, the investigations of
mediumship which began with the investigation of Mrs.
Piper by William James and later by the Society for
Psychical Research, and ran through the eighties, nineties, and on into this century.

4. The period in which laboratories of academic
psychology joined
the societies of psychical research in
the investigation of problems of extrasensory perception.

5. The period,
beginning in this decade, in which the
science of anthropology is entering the picture with the
investigation of "physical effects seemingly of parapsychical character," mostly in connection with primitive religions and magical rites and practices27.

Summary Of Progress To Date

In his book, The Reach of the Mind28, Dr. Rhine
summarizes the conclusions that any "open-minded"
person must draw from evidence uncovered up to 1947.
It would seem that this summary would form a con
venient bridge between our discussion of the history of
formal, scholarly research in parapsychology and our
discussion of technical matters involved in this science.

1. Mind-to-mind interaction (telepathy) occurs
without a known physical medium.

2. Mind can enter into a cognitive relation with
matter (clairvoyance) without the use of any known
sensory-mechanical means.

3. This mental capacity is able to transcend space
(has no relation to distance.)

4.
It also transcends the time dimension (precognition, retrocognition).

5. The extraphysical system of the mind exerts a
significant influence on moving cubes ("psychokinesis") (p. 108).

6. Psychokinesis ("PK"), like other parapsychological faculties, is nonphysical in character (p. 119).

7. Telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are so
closely related and so unified logically and experimentally that these forms of mind-matter interaction can
be regarded as one, single, fundamental, two-way process (p. 130).

8. These faculities are necessarily functions of the
whole mind; the integral human mind must participate
in PK and ESP just as it does in any other normal
mental performance (p. 152).